Crowley's Egg: Secret Chiefs & Scarlet Women Parts I, II & IIIPage: 1/4 (7593 total words in this text) (4404 Reads) 
by Vincent Bridges
Part One: The Egg Of Mystery
Like so much else about this tangled subject, synchronicity brought this singularly important piece of the puzzle to my attention. On an e-group usually devoted to the mysteries of Rennes-le-Chateau and other western tradition themes, a post about mysterious eggs and meeting the Dalai Lama caught my attention. It seems that the list owner, a fine RLC researcher and esoteric scholar who goes by the name of Stella Maris, had a vision about an egg on a mountain top, purchased a glass egg in Hong Kong and then met the Dalai Lama in the airport.
She published the story in Duat, a CD journal, and the e-group was discussing it. The very first post on the subject grabbed my attention, and I anxiously watched the thread unfold, even chiming in on the Tibetan aspects. And then another group member posted quotes on the mystic significance of eggs from The Chymical Wedding and Crowley's 1918 Amalantrah workings. Suddenly, an almost forgotten piece of the puzzle surfaced, and as it snapped into place a new and somewhat surprising image emerged.
To see it, we must back up and start with the most controversial part of the Crowley section of Omen for Armageddon, my speculation on the possible reality of a group of Islamic initiates in touch with Crowley in the days prior to The Book of the Law.
Here's how I put it in An Omen for Armageddon - Part VI:
The events of the weeks, from the 21st of March to April 7th, leading up to the three-day marathon dictation of the Book of the Law are shrouded in confusion and intentional obscurity. In all of Crowley's voluminous writings, only these few weeks are skimmed over, as Crowley, the man who could describe a mountain ascendant in graphic detail 40 years after it happened, claimed memory failure and intentionally misleading entries in his diaries. This is so curious as to require an explanation, but Crowley passed it off as a result of his distaste at the content of The Book of the Law, a feeble excuse at best.
So what did happen? Pieced together from all of Crowley's evasive comments over the years, we can put together a somewhat suppositional chronology. On the afternoon of the 22nd, probably on the terrace at Shepherd's, Crowley met an Anglo-Egyptian initiate, probably of some Egyptian Sufi order, possibly the sheik with whom Crowley had been studying the Arabic Qabala. He discussed the situation with him and possibly received some advice. Do nothing further tonight, but do a divination on the 23rd and we'll meet again on the 24th. Crowley apparently followed this advice and did a long complicated Tarot and I Ching reading. Although Crowley recorded this divination, he nowhere published or described its contents.
On the 24th, he again met his Sufi initiate. Crowley's personal magickal record called him "Idris" or Enoch in Arabic. Beyond this point, silence falls. Sometime in this period, Crowley and Rose visited the Boulak Museum and Rose identified her Horus communicant with the Stele of Anhk-f-n Knonshu, exhibit number 666 in the catalogue. This impressed Crowley even further and, perhaps through his initiate's contacts, he had a copy and a translation made. By April 7th all was in readiness, awaiting only Rose's signal to begin.
Crowley's personal diary gives us some clues to what happened in the interval between the 24th and the 7th, but Crowley claimed that he couldn't remember what they stood for, the entries were in code, or that they were faked as blinds to his real, now forgotten activities. Apparently, although the dates are blotted out, Crowley made at least one more contact with his Sufi friend. Also, on April 6th, we find the curious note: "Go off again to H, taking A's p." H could be Helwan or Heliopolis, and given the role "Aiwass" was about to play, the "A" could possibly be him. Crowley was always very cagey about the subject, although he did claim that he was or had been, a living person.
Could The Book of the Law, in however oblique a fashion, have come from Crowley's encounter with a real illuminated tradition within Islam? Could he have been provided with the insight and techniques required to make contact with the voice of the Aeon? The truth will likely never be known, and Crowley himself seems to have observed in this case a vow of silence more significant than any other in his life.
But he did return to the theme of hidden masters. First there's Aiwass, who communicated the text of Liber AL vel Legis to Crowley in the 1904 Cairo Working. And there's Abuldiz, who bid Crowley write Magick in Theory and Practice with Virakam in 1911. Then there's the Wizard, Amalantrah, who presented the mystery of the Egg, which Crowley was supposed to go look for in Egypt and never did. The Arabic connections are obvious on all counts.
The three women who made these connections, sometimes almost unwittingly, can be said to be the true Scarlet Women in Crowley's life. Rose Kelley, Ouarda, was the first and most important; from her flowed The Book of the Law. The second was Mary D'Este Sturgis, Virakam, with whom Crowley could have accomplished great things. Unfortunately, they were not able to meet the challenge, Crowley most of all, and the mission was never completed. The third was "Roddie" Minor, known as The Camel in the Confessions. Here's how Crowley described the moment when all these threads came together:
"I was sitting at my desk, working. To my surprised annoyance, the Camel suddenly began to have visions. I shut off my hearing in the way I have learnt to do; but after some five minutes babbling she pierced my defences by some remark concerning an egg under a palm tree. This aroused me instantly, for the last instruction given to myself and Soror Virakam was to go to the desert and look for just that thing."
All of these are mystical events are related by the metaphor of the egg.
First, The Book of the Law connection:
"I am unique & conqueror. I am not of the slaves that perish. Be they damned & dead! Amen. (This is of the 4: there is a fifth who is invisible, & therein am I as a babe in an egg. ) II: 48 AL. BotL (Note that this is the Egg of Spirit, the fifth element of aether.)"
"Hoor-Paar-Kraat is the Babe in the Egg of Blue, or the Crowned Child upon the Lotus, and He is a universal symbol of the Holy Guardian Angel. He is the Virginal God within who represents true innocence?" In other words a western version of Manjusri...
And then, here's some of the Camel's visions:
Q: Is it expedient to start to find the egg and when should we start?
A: The egg is a work which must be done - the great work. By doing the work we get to the key.
Q: Is it the same vision as in the Virakam vision?
A: The work must go on and there must be an altar, created in Egypt - starting in Egypt. I see the Arab, the one that was at the well some time ago. He will be at one of the corners of the altar.
Q: Does Egypt mean the (geographical country or the mystic expression?) (Asked without words.)
A: Utter darkness appears. A man with a beast's head, something like a dog with a bird's beak for a nose. It is a hawk's head. I see a snake or scorpion. A nebula. Now there are many tiny chains at the feet of 729, coming from this nebula. Now an open door in a hut. A white cloth hangs on it. By this a tall palm, but its top is like a fir tree.
Q: Geburah applied to what?
A: The egg. The egg is resting on the point of mountain tops, very sharp. Water around, lotus flowers on it.
Q: Egg is symbol of some new knowledge, isn't it?
A: Gimel. Lamed. ( = spring, fountain.)
Q: What does that mean?
A: I don't know; followed symbol of mountain and lotus flower.
Q: How are we to break open the egg?
A: In plain language it means Thou art to go this Way.
"I see the egg on the pylon. I ask who the egg belongs to. The wizard shows me a hen laying an egg and says 'Whose egg is this?' I ask him what his opinion is of us. He respects T., but pays little attention to me. This part about little attention to me is false in me. I have to readjust myself back to a true attitude towards the wizard. He now shows me a mirror. I have on a travelling hat. T. in a robe in a hotel room. This means something about a home. We are to go to Egypt for the key. The key might be in center of egg when it is broken. It is a small golden key."
"The wizard (Amalantrah) was standing and still held one or two sticks in his hand. He smiled and said, ``Child.'' I then saw a most beautiful naked boy 5 or 6 years old dancing and playing in the woods in front of us. T. (Crowley) asked how he would look dressed and when I saw him in conventional clothes he looked very uncomfortable and repressed. He looked as if he should be dressed in skins such as tigers'. To one side near the place where I made the fire was a large turtle standing up as a penguin stands."
"The wizard was very happy and satisfied looking. He sat down and reached out his hand to me and had me sit down beside him. As we watched the boy he put his left arm around me tenderly and placed my head on the left side of his chest near the shoulder.
He said, 'It's all in the egg.' The End."
The mention of "the Way" in the above quote relates to another mysterious event related to this series of disincarnate encounters, the appearance of the ultra or extra terrestrial Lam. Crowley's portrait of Lam, a curious drawing which he included in his Dead Souls exhibition held in Greenwich Village, New York, in 1919, the same year it was published as a frontispiece to Crowley's Commentary to Blavatsky's The Voice of the Silence. That there is a connection between the portrait and the Commentary, sub-titled Liber LXXI, (LAM in Hebrew add up to 71) may be inferred from the inscription accompanying the frontispiece, which was entitled The Way:
"LAM is the Tibetan word for Way or Path, and LAMA is He who Goeth, the specific title of the Gods of Egypt, the Treader of the Path, in Buddhistic phraseology. Its numerical value is 71, the number of this book."
Crowley left no record as to the origin of this portrait, although he remarked many years later that it was drawn from life. It is certain, however, that the drawing arose from the aftermath of the Amalantrah Working, a series of magical visions and communications received in 1918 through the mediumship of The Camel, Roddie Minor. This was in many ways a continuation of the Abuldiz Working of several years previous. In both of these Workings, the symbolism of the egg featured prominently. One of the earlier visions of the Amalantrah Working ended with the sentence, "It's all in the egg." During the final surviving vision of this Working, in reference to a question about the egg, Crowley was told that, "Thou art to go this Way."
Some groups within the OTO have developed the following method for using this ET contact in a meditative manner:
The mode of Entering the Egg may proceed as follows. Each votary is encouraged to experiment and to evolve his own method from this basic procedure:
- Sit in silence before the portrait.
- Invoke mentally by silent repetition of the Name.
- If response is felt to be positive, but not before, enter the Egg and merge with That which is within and look out through the entity's eyes on what appears now to the votary an alien world. (Adumbrations of identity with Lam may be experienced as a strong sense of the unreality, or unfamiliarity, of the 'objective' universe.)
- Seal the Egg, i.e. close the eyes of Lam and await developments.
- At the first sign of stress or fatigue, return to mundane consciousness by opening the eyes and by oozing out of the Egg in a form determined by the experiences within.
- Perform, astrally, the Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram of Earth, at the Eight Spaces, and record all experiences in detail, paying particular attention to lunar phases (celestial and, where applicable, terrestrial), and any physiological phenomena accompanying the experience.
The injunctions to go look for the Egg in Egypt however leads us back to The Book of the Law. In the third part, MS page 16 has a grid pattern on it, with a slash and a small circle and cross. The verse on that page is III: 47:
"47. This book shall be translated into all tongues: but always with the original in the writing of the Beast; for in the chance shape of the letters and their position to one another: in these are mysteries that no Beast shall divine. Let him not seek to try: but one cometh after him, whence I say not, who shall discover the Key of it all. Then this line drawn is a key: then this circle squared in its failure is a key also. And Abrahadabra. It shall be his child & that strangely. Let him not seek after this; for thereby alone can he fall from it."
This is the third riddle. The first in I:22, the secret name of Nuit, is actually that of Sekhmet, the Egyptian goddess of magick and catastrophes. The second in II: 76, the "secret teachings" verse, and the third is found in III: 47: "Then this line drawn is a key: then this circle squared in its failure is a key also."
Here's an interpretation of part of the "secret teachings" in II: 76, which contains comments on the Egg metaphor:
The next three letters, OVA, should be looked at together as well as separately. The letters themselves spell ova, a good Latin word for egg. This shows that these "selves" are the embryonic form of a human being. All of us have the internal struggle between the high and the lower, with the conscious self often a confused bystander. Indeed, this is the human condition. The egg of the self awaits emergence into the adult being of the soul. Gurdjieff calls human beings "three-brained" and modern studies in brain physiology agree with him. We have right and left hemispheres, with a control function that unites them.
I think that the best representation ever done of the OVA theme is a painting by Bosch called the Garden of Earthly Delights. It is a triptych. When closed, it shows the Egg of the World. It opens into three panels. The left panel, the heaven panel corresponds to the higher self and shows three composed figures: Adam, Eve, and the Christ. In the background are strange and wondrous, as well as ordinary, animals. There is also a bizarre fountain showing the orderly, or heavenly functioning of the psychic centers in Man.
The panel to the right corresponds to the lower self, obsessed by objects, vices and perversions. It is hell indeed. We witness all manner of violence, lust, greed and sadism. We are reminded of the six o'clock news on a hot news day.
The central panel fully catches our attention. This is the middle self of integrated awareness, filled with joy and delight and fascinating strangeness. People and nature are the focus of this panel and the wild elven frolicks have a sensual elegance to them. We are drawn to groups that are performing things that are beyond our comprehension, such as the two dancers back-to-back in the thorny flower with the raspberries and the owl perched on top. For all the unusual quality of the image, we know this place. It is somewhere we have been some times, between time, some forgotten time when we, too, have danced among this throng ourselves.
This is not the place to fully interpret the images in this great masterpiece. But a mere glimpse will reveal its connection with the ideas of the Devil, the Hierophant and The Fool. OVA conceals and reveals nothing less than the entire science of psychology.
It has been speculated that the grid page, and its X marks the spot riddle, should be overlaid on a map of Egypt. Jonathan Sellers on his Crowley's Egg website proposes that the X is located near Nag Hammidi on little evidence beyond wishful thinking.
However, if we take a map of the Delta, Lower Egypt, region of the same proportions as the page of the Book of the Law and superimpose them, then some interesting things pop out immediately. The line on the page starts at Alexandria and travels at roughly a 26-degree angle to the old site of Memphis on the banks of the Nile. The circle and cross then falls on the ancient necropolis of Sakkara...
Perhaps that's where Abul Diz wanted Crowley and Virakam to look...
Curiouser and curiouser...
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